


Drowning in the Wishing Well

by thecarlysutra



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Grief, Italy, Love Triangles, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-09
Updated: 2007-11-09
Packaged: 2017-10-12 17:19:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/127179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecarlysutra/pseuds/thecarlysutra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faith delivers some news.</p><p>Title from the Bif Naked song, "After a While."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drowning in the Wishing Well

  
Buffy is walking through a plaza on her way to have lunch with Dawn. The sun is shining, and the streets are cheerfully alive with the babble of foreign tongues and the comfortingly universal urban noises of car motors and radios and arguments. Buffy is walking through a plaza on her way to have lunch with Dawn, in the sun, and then she is drowning. Her lungs are full of water and there's pressure on the back of her head, on the wingspace between her shoulderblades. The taste of copper fills her mouth, and when she opens her eyes, Buffy sees only blinding white.

Buffy kicks up as hard as she can, swings back with her arms. The pressure on her releases, and she splashes ungracefully over, out. The sunlight is blinding, and water cascades down her face, and it takes Buffy a long time to focus her eyes.

"Faith?"

Then there's a lightning quick fist, and Buffy's under the water again, her head throbbing with bright colors. She surfaces, tries to come to her feet, but her heel slips and she's flat on her ass, half underwater. She squints, looks down. Coins. Coins everywhere beneath her, smooth and bright. Fish scales.

Faith has tossed her into a fountain in the middle of the plaza like a loose penny.

"What the hell?" Buffy demands from flat on her ass in the middle of a fountain.

"He would have died for you," Faith says, and there's the fist again.

Buffy ducks, but when she tries to stand and counter, the coins undo her and she falls again. Dammit.

"What are you talking about?" Buffy is becoming unpleasantly aware of the growing crowd watching them bicker.

And then, without a single tell from her dark-eyed, dark-lipped face, Faith is on top of her, jumping into the water without preamble or hesitation. And Buffy's under the water again, Faith's hands at her throat, her leather-clad legs embracing her hips and pinning her to the unstable metal.

Buffy pushes up—hard—and Faith goes flying against the centerpiece of the fountain, a statue of a naked cherub. Faith's burgundy mouth is sneering, and her eyes are aflame. There's blood on her cheek, a woundkiss from the cherub, and Buffy worries briefly about doing damage to the stupid statue in the event that it's super old or something.

"Angel's dead," Faith says, and then the girl's cold, strong fingers are around Buffy's throat again. And then the water, up over her mouth, nose, eyes.

Buffy doesn't fight this time. She watches the distortion of Faith as offered by the water: her features are softened, and she's lit unnaturally by the reflection of the coins, like a saint or an angel.

When Faith realizes Buffy's done fighting, she lets go, and Buffy floats to the top of the water.

"Dead," she repeats when the air hits her face. The sun is still too bright on Faith, too bright everywhere.

"Dead," Faith says, and she sits in the fountain, too, letting her weight fall against the statue in the center, as though she literally needs the support to stay above the water.  



End file.
